The restaurants serving food to the greatest number of persons are those termed as the fast foods. These restaurants have more or less been limited to those foods having relatively simple portion control i.e. hamburger per weight, chicken per pieces, weiner per unit, and beef and ham in chipped portions to be individually weighed. Other fast food restaurants serving the prepared meal cut the meat portion before cooking. This, too, does not present a particular portion control problem.
In view of the extremely large number of portions dispensed daily by the fast food restaurants, accuracy in portion is most essential to cost control. This is especially true with the meat items in prepared dinners in that they represent the highest cost factor.
Prime ribs (generically known although not necessarily of U.S. prime quality) is a favored dish in most sit-down and serve restaurants. Due to the cooking losses, the varying and odd shapes of the overall roasts, together with the in-bone, the prime rib is not extensively sold in fast food restaurants. More recently there has been localized sucess in selling prime rib prepared meals in the fast food restaurants.
Although there is available to the restaurants commercially pre-prepared boneless prime rib for cooking, the attendant disadvantages of handling and portion control have not been resolved. Initially, prime rib restaurant meals are sold in a medium-rare cooked state; the roast when cutting is, therefore, very pliable. When this is taken into consideration together with the young and inexperienced kitchen help generally employed by the fast food restaurants, portion cutting with any degree of accuracy is not attained. The minimum markup on the per meal served together with the large turnover in help almost precludes the sale of prime rib dinners in a fast food restaurant. A prepared prime rib portion cut to meet a certain meal price level, for instance, needs to have 26 slices per roast. If only 25 slices are attained the entire profit for the roast is lost; on the other hand, 27 slices would be underselling to the customer.
Again, there are other problems of fast-food prime rib beef; particularly, most states have ordinances requiring that the beef be retained at all times at a pre-determined temperature. These temperatures can only be attained in an oven. Realistically, then the prime rib especially if it were sold in a fast food restaurant, would be continually placed in and removed from an oven. The personnel handling the meat is multiplied and practically speaking would defeat any sanitation regulations.
There is in the prior art innumerable portion slicers, particularly with bread and bacon, but there are some for meat and a few for cooked foods such as beef. These, too, have their attendant disadvantages and hence do not resolve the problems found in dispensing prime beef or the like in a fast food restaurant.
With the known prior art beef slicers it is still necessary that the human hand maintain the position of pliable meat. Accordingly, in a fast food restaurant with the large number of working personnel it is not inconceivable that 5-10 different hands would be holding each piece of beef when cutting and/or when returning the beef to the oven.
Under exertion of the hand on the meat defeats any attempt at accuracy as the greasy meat will move back and forth; over exertion of the hand on the meat causes loss of juices. The most important aspect of prime ribs is its juices--a jus. Loss of juices therefore is not only a loss of weight but also results in a dryer piece of meat--less appealing and desireable.
As aforesaid, the prior art has not suggested a reasonable solution at maintaining the meat at a predetermined temperature. Placing the entire cutter in and out of the oven is of questionable benefit, increases handling, and merely aggravates the aforesaid problems. In actuality the help would probably allow the cutter to set on a counter irrespective of rules, regulations, and laws.
So-called hot plates are known but these plates are either too hot, which would result in the further cooking of the underside of the roast, or not hot enough to maintain the entire roast at any great temperature.